Bruce Cannaday oral history transcript with wife Pauline

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O R A L H I S T O R Y
BRUCE CANNADY
FISHERY RESOURCES PROGRAM - HATCHERIES
Interview
by
JERRY C. GROVER
March 23, 2000
Portland, Oregon
Oral History Program
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
National Conservation Training Center
Shepherdstown, West Virginia
Bruce Cannady at age 95ABSTRACT: Bruce Cannady played a significant role in the siteing, funding and construction of major new and reconstructed fish hatcheries in the Pacific Northwest. These hatcheries located on Indian reservations and along major water courses doubled the annual release of Pacific salmonids to enhance Tribal benefits and meet mitigation objectives of Federal water development projects. He also played a major role in the professionalization of the hatchery manager cadre in the selection of college graduate fishery biologists and developing a training program for the entry level personnel into the National Fish Hatchery system. He retired as a Deputy Assistant Regional Directory for the National Fish Hatcheries in the Pacific Northwest with 32 years of service. Notable, as of January 2009 his 32 years of service has resulted in 38 years of retirement as he approaches his 97th birthday.
Oral History
Interview with Bruce Cannady (age 89) (and his wife Pauline – age 92)
At his home in Portland, Oregon
Interviewed by: Jerry C. Grover
March 23, 2000
Jerry Grover: I’m talking with Bruce Cannady, retired Deputy Regional Supervisor for Fish Hatcheries for Region 1, the Pacific Region, and his wife Pauline.
Bruce Cannady: I was born in 1912 in Central Park, Nebraska. I went to high school in a small school at McGrew, which is in the country. Dad was a farmer
Jerry Grover: How did you meet Pauline?
Bruce Cannady: Another gal and I had split up is the best way I can say, and I went back over to McGrew and I knew there was a dance, and I went to the dance, and there was a girl there and I met her.
Pauline Cannady: She was a teacher he knew. First we went to the church, didn’t we?
Bruce Cannady: No, we were at Albertine’s Place.
Pauline Cannady: Well, they said that they were going to have a dance afterwards, so we went there. I went with another fellow, but I got there and I kept dancing with Bruce. I thought he was the one that brought me.
Bruce Cannady: And then she was surprised when the dance broke up and Aldin showed up, and he said, “Well, we’re ready to go,” and Pauline looked at me kind of surprised. I liked her.
Pauline Cannady: Bruce lived in town, but Aldin lived out in the country and he’d come in to see me, and Bruce would come right over.Jerry Grover: So after that it didn’t take long I take it, that the love birds kind of got in you...
Bruce Cannady: She moved to Scotts Bluff. I was in the town of Bayard, and that’s where she had graduated from high school. I worked at the sugar factory there as a chemist. And then I finally decided she was right for me in 1934, and boy things are really, anyway, I’m trying to think. I went to Scotts Bluff. I was at the factory for five years at Bayard, and then I was up there for two years. Oh, I was still at Bayard after we got married because I stayed with her mother. We only saw each other at the weekends because she was working in Scotts Bluff and I was working in Bayard. So we got married.
Pauline Cannady: He’s younger than I am, and I didn’t want to marry a younger fellow.
Bruce Cannady: Yeah, we got married, 65 years of it. We got married when I was only 21. I tell you, the reason, one of the reasons I got married is it was right in the middle of, I got a job over here and she had a job here, and we, and I had to walk about eight blocks, and we’d get together in the evening, and I’d walk home, and I finally said along in the spring, I said, you know, this is the silliest thing in the world. You know, in these days you just shack up and let it go at that. Well, those days you didn’t do it that way. So I said one day, “You know, this is silly. We’re both paying rent and maybe we ought to just get married and move together, and we would have more money and not be spending it for rent.” Pauline surprised me. She said, “You know, that sounds like a pretty good idea.” We waited, remember, we waited until the Fourth of July.
Pauline Cannady: Yeah, we both got days off. We got married the third of July in the evening
Bruce Cannady: We waited about six weeks, and we both had the time off on, lets see, what was it, Saturday and Sunday. We got married on Friday evening so we could go somewhere over the weekend, which we did. Well, we didn’t want to wait until the fourth.
Jerry Grover: How long was it then you started, the kids started coming along then?
Bruce Cannady: Seven and a half years, one. No, she had told me, I believe it was before me, when we began to think about, you know the future, and she advised me that there would never be any children because she had broken, had her back broken the year she got out of high school.
Pauline Cannady: The doctor told me be sure and tell my boyfriend if we got engaged, think of it to tell him that I may not be able to have any children. So I did. Well, we didn’t want any children then anyway.
Depression time!
Bruce Cannady: So we went along and then, and then when I went to work for the government, we’d been here two, two and a half years and we made a trip out West and that was the first time we’d never been on the West Coast, and so I said, “Why don’t we move out to Washington?” And I managed that, got all set up, moved in out here in the spring. We’d come back to Leadville and things were beginning to get to where I was getting to be moved, and then she said she was pregnant.
So we left Leadville and got out here, and he was born in May. We landed out here in November, and Mike was born in May.
Jerry Grover: Did you have lots of sisters and brothers? Did you grow up with sisters?
Pauline Cannady: Yes, I had five sisters and two brothers.Jerry Grover: What about you, Bruce?
Bruce Cannady: I only had one brother, and he’s seven and a half years younger than I am. We both started out in Nebraska. I wound up with the Federal service, wandering around and finally landed in Portland. He got a job out of Nebraska with Boeing up here at the end of the war. When he got out of that, he got his degree at the University of Washington and went to work in Seattle; wound up finally as Assistant Planning Director here in Portland for the City of Portland. And so we both wound up a few blocks from each other. We started in a different place and wound up in the same place doing different things.
Jerry Grover: You were living in Scotts Bluff, Nebraska, and you’re applying for a job with the Fish and Wildlife Service.
Bruce Cannady: I was expecting an answer, and here I am reading this letter about Fish and Wildlife Service, and I don’t even understand what I’m trying to read . I just figured, well, I’d forgotten about it. But as it happens, I was caught, when was it, about in March. Didn’t really have a job. So I said, well, what shall I do? Pauline says, “Why don’t we go over and just ask for a job, and maybe we can go over to Denver or somewhere.” She was working at the time at Woolworth’s in Scotts Bluff, Nebraska. Wound up with that idea when we went up to Leadville, Colorado that if after three months, if we didn’t like it, we’d go back to Denver to look around.
Jerry Grover: Are these summer months or winter months?
Bruce Cannady: We went up on the 4th of April, 1939, and I wound up getting a job for 32 years instead of three months, and stayed at Leadville National Fish Hatchery for about two and a half years. They sent me out to Carson National Fish Hatchery, Washington. It was a beautiful little place, but I tell you, they couldn’t raise fish there at all, really, because they didn’t have any ponds. So we were there one year, sent to California to Coleman National Fish Hatchery. We were there five and a half years. My first year there, I was at the old hatchery, Battle Creek substation that they finally closed. Then I went up to the main Coleman station and stayed there until 1948, and then they sent us to, back believe it or not back to Carson again. Pauline had no more idea of wanting to go back to Carson than the man in the moon. But then we were there one year, and then they sent us to Cortland.
Jerry Grover: What grade were you hired in at when you went to Leadville, Bruce?
Bruce Cannady: When I was at Leadville, and an unknown thing at that time, I think they called it the Apprentice Fish Culturist.
Pauline Cannady: Apprentice Fish Culturist.
Bruce Cannady: Yeah, Apprentice Fish Culturist, and I was in that, what, two years.
Pauline Cannady: And they, they could have you leave after what, six months if they weren’t satisfied.
Bruce Cannady: Yeah, the old probationary period. And then when I landed back at Carson, I was called a Junior Fish Culturist, and then when I went to Battle Creek, what did they call it then? They called...
Pauline Cannady: Assistant Superintendent.
Bruce Cannady: No, Senior Fish Culturist, I don’t remember exactly. I wasn’t in charge. I was working for......, he died, and then I was acting manager for three or four months.Pauline Cannady: He was dying of cancer, and so Bruce...
Bruce Cannady: Can you remember his name? Isn’t that awful? That is my problem anymore. And then I was there, oh, about a year when I went up to Coleman, and I worked then as a foreman, something like that, foreman fish culturist? No, it wasn’t that. Foreman what? I was in charge of, they had this thing all cut up in some fashion and I don’t really remember, but I was... Anyway, I was there, what, five years. Then they sent me as the manager at Carson. I felt pretty good because I’d, come in and not knowing anything about what I was getting into, and nine years later I was manager, and most of the fellows around there had either never made manager or they made it later.
Jerry Grover: Were those GS grades at that time, with Manager?
Bruce Cannady: I was a 6 I think, at that time. Yeah, I know I was a 6 because just a year or two later they moved us, and we had to do it twice. We moved from a 7 and then to a 9, and that was about, well, I’d been at Carson, I’d been to Cortland [,New York Training School] and back. I went as a 6. God, that ís what everybody was, GS-5 or 6. Then we come back as a, and I come back as a 9 about a year later. Well, a 7 and then a 9, and I was there from 1948 to Cortland and back...
Pauline Cannady: 1957.
Bruce Cannady: And in 1957 I came..and in 1957 I came...
Pauline Cannady: We came to Walker.
Jerry Grover: Where were you between 1950 and 1957? Were you at Carson or at Cortland?
Bruce Cannady: Seven years...
Pauline Cannady: They remodeled it all for them ponds and...
Jerry Grover: In Carson?
Pauline Cannady: He was heading up all that remodeling.
Jerry Grover: Okay, they had just the three houses that were there.
Bruce Cannady: Oh yeah, but they built the other houses and put in ponds. That was done when I was there.
Pauline Cannady: And all those ponds.
Jerry Grover: Okay, and then you came, in 1957 then you came to the Regional Office in Portland, Oregon.
Bruce Cannady: I came in as Assistant Regional Supervisor in 1957.
Jerry Grover: What grade was that?
Bruce Cannady: It was a GS-12. Well, I came in as 11. Let’s see, again, I was a 9. I had to wait a year, got my 11, and then another year to 12. But that is what practically everybody was having to do if they moved into the office, because you know, they’ve always had this little problem of when people are promoted, and I held there until, well I was a GS-13 when I retired.Pauline Cannady: You had gone to Washington, DC between that time.
Bruce Cannady: 1950, after I’d been there three years, they sent me to Washington, DC in a training program. I was here, well first they called me in about September and kept me in Washington until December. Then I came home; I was home 17 day. They sent me back in for a training program, middle management training from January until June, and then I come back to Portland and they...
Pauline Cannady: He wouldnít stay there.
Bruce Cannady: Now, let me tell that story in my way. When I come back to Portland, they wanted me to go back to Washington and stay there and take my chances on wherever I wanted. I felt I had a couple of things that was wrong. First, I didn’t have a degree which was never, I always figured that was going to always be three strikes on me anyway because practically, well I think everybody had.
Jerry Grover: You didn’t have a fisheries degree or you didn’t have a college degree?
Bruce Cannady: I didn’t have a college degree.
Pauline Cannady: Some college classes but……..
Bruce Cannady: Oh, I had some here and there, and even when I was in Washington, DC up there in that middle management I picked up six credits in George Washington University. And anyway, people, including Abe Tunnison and Ray Johnson, Bill Hagen all wanted me to come back there, and I was a little reluctant, very reluctant in fact, because the more I thought, the more I’m probably going to wind up with a Washington office career. And I liked it here. I had a home here.
Pauline Cannady: But there was, you also liked the hatcheries and they weren’t so interested in hatcheries.
Bruce Cannady: Well, you spent your time in Washington, DC, and you know that it’s different.
Jerry Grover: I had two trips, yes.
Bruce Cannady: It’s a different climate.
Jerry Grover: Yes, it is.
Bruce Cannady: Completely different climate.
Jerry Grover: Well, the people at the time, did Bill Hagen have a college degree?
Bruce Cannady: Oh, yes. Everybody had it.
Jerry Grover: Everybody. The people that were back there then, so you were, you felt out of place?
Bruce Cannady: Well, when I was in Portland, the Assistant Director, I mean, Assistant Regional Director Barnaby had his masters and he begged me to go to Washington, and I kept telling him I could go and I’m sure I’m smart enough, but I know a few people in Washington that would resent the hell out of anybody that would even think they should have any kind of a promotion, and I’m not going to get into this, and I didn’t.Pauline Cannady: And so when he come home, they called me and talked to me, tried to, said, “Get him to come to Washington.”
Jerry Grover: Who was that? Is that Barnaby or was it Bill Hagen?
Pauline Cannady: No, I don’t know.
Bruce Cannady: Bill Hagen sat, stood in my house one evening, told Pauline, “Goddam it, you’ve got to get him to go back there or he’s just going to sit here and rot.” So I sat here and rotted.
Pauline Cannady: And he enjoyed it.
Jerry Grover: Okay. So now you’re out here. You were, you said you came out when you came back from Washington DC under the training program. You came back as what, essentially the same job?
Bruce Cannady: When I came here, see, when I came here in 1957, Ned Tuttle was the Supervisor of Hatcheries, and I was the Assistant, and that was it. There was two of us was all. Just before I left in 1960 to go back to this, that, and the other, Marv Smith came in. I approved him in fact. He had to have my approval because we’ve got to have a man; “what would you think of Marv Smith?” I thought he would be great. Anyway and then he came and I, I had to leave, and I was gone about eight months or so, or nine. So the two of them handled it then. So when I come back for the first time, we had three. Well a little later, (I don’t remember just when) Ray Vaughan came in and worked for us a couple of years, and then Paul Handy. Galen [Buterbaugh] was here. Oh, we had a lot of nice people going through here and going up, and up, and up. Paul Handy and John Miller were here up until the time I retired. I was the, somewhere in there, I became a, the Deputy, it isn’t Deputy, what do they call it? Anyway, Tuttle was the Supervisor of Hatcheries, and I was the Assistant, and that was it.
Pauline Cannady: You were working with <unclear> then.
Bruce Cannady: Well, this, this was a little different. This, about five years before I retired, which would be about 1966, Kimmerick, when I came into Washington. He said, “one of these days I’m going to be going, and I’ve been into building hatcheries. Whatever has been going on, and you better kind of watch and do whatever you have to do as you go along because this is going to happen.” Well, he was right because about 1960, I don’t know, mid-í60's was when we had, began to build things like the big one out at Spring Creek.
Jerry Grover: The rebuilding the Spring Creek.
Bruce Cannady: And the one out at Dworshak.
Jerry Grover: Dworshak Hatchery. Before that, Kooskia NFH.
Bruce Cannady: Well, I also was into it for the State of Oregon here at Bonneville Dam. I was into some of the work that was being done in the Warm Springs reservation, down in California at the spawning channel at Red Bluff. I had Quinault and Makah Hatcheries up in northwest Washington, that was, Dan Slater agreed to have that. Well, and then I kind of helped out here and there on that, and anyway...
Jerry Grover: So you were basically into the construction money bag, organizing?
Bruce Cannady: That was the last five years I was working; I had a hand in, and one of the reasons I retired. We began to, we planned to move on these hatcheries that where were beginning to be constructed or were already half finished or wherever we were. One day the Corps of Engineers called me from Walla Walla and started telling me about the hatcheries that they were going to have built in eastern Washington, what they called, oh what was the name of these?
Jerry Grover: That would be the Lower Snake River Compensation Plan.
Bruce Cannady: They wanted me too, they said. I said, “good Lord, this will take five years just to get the thing lined up and get people thinking it would be a good idea, and I’m not going to wait that long to retire.” And they kept bothering me so I retired, and it was never built. It was not planned. It would have been if I had been there, I think, but I don’t know, because I didn’t stay long enough.
Interviewers Note: The Lower Snake Compensation Plan hatchery system was built and is operating as a joint venture between the Federal Corps of Engineers, the construction agency, the Fish & Wildlife Service, the budgeting & technical administrative agency and the States of Idaho and Washington, the operating entities.
Jerry Grover: So you retired then in 1971.
Bruce Cannady: Yeah. I was 58 years old. 32 years of service, and I had planned to wait until I was at least, well, maybe even 62, certainly 60, and the day that I went down to tell John Finely that I was going to retire, you wouldn’t believe it. We ate lunch, John and Gib Basset and a little group of us, and one of them said, “Hell, you’re not going to retire because we don’t even have any word about that.” The other one said, “Oh yes, we did.” It just fell on his lap just about 20 minutes ago.
Pauline Cannady: You <unclear>.
Bruce Cannady: Oh, that is another hatchery.
Jerry Grover: Lahontan, in Nevada.
Bruce Cannady: Yeah, I was in on the end of that one too. I was into, I suppose I could sit down and probably count, there was probably eight of them, at least.
Jerry Grover: And if they weren’t built brand new they were reconstructed, like Spring Creek.
Bruce Cannady: Yeah, but some of them were new. Quinault was new. And Makah, yeah. And so was Warm Springs for the tribe. And the one in California was new, Tehama-Colusa, the spawning channel. The Russian River. That was one that California ended up operating. It was a Corps of Engineers project.
Well, most of the time I knew who was going to operate. The one that finally come out that I thought was going to be built by the State, fell apart and we wound up with Spring Creek [National Fish Hatchery]. It was just one of those things. Because I was working with the states and we all knew what the policies were, and we might argue and talk about it, but when we got down to talking finally, like Bonneville Dam, there was no question about where it was going to be and how much it was going to be. But they were expecting one person to kind of carry the ball.
Jerry Grover: They, the Corps?
Bruce Cannady: When I began working with the Corps, hardly anybody was speaking with the Fish and Wildlife Service. It took me three years to get some fences mended, and when I finally got the fences mended with a lot of other help, guess what? --you just stood back and got out of the way, because they were going to build places like Dworshak whether you wanted it or not..Jerry Grover: Well, Dworshak, as I understand it, was going to be a state operated hatchery until halfway through and then Idaho backed out. Was that a surprise?
Bruce Cannady: Not really, because I was almost sure that the Federal Government was going to build it because I had been talking along with the Corps, and we were talking about the State. We had to pay the state of Idaho, keeping the state aboard on every meeting we had and it was all at once clear. They said, “Jesus, this thing is going to be pretty big, isn’t it?” And I said, “You better believe it”. “Well, who is going to finance it?” And I said, “Well, that is something we have to begin to work out pretty soon, because there is going to be a lot of money involved.” Well what really broke it, I don’t know who the boss was, but he is one of the people that came in and he said, “Well, what we want to do is for you to give us the money and we will go ahead and build it.” And I said, “You people are foolish. If they ask you, like, we’ll say four million dollars short, and you’re three-fourths finished, what are you going to do then, dig up your own money? I said, “The Corps will never do that.” “Well, what will you do?” I said, “Just tell the Corps to build it, and it doesn’t matter.” It wound up ten million dollars is what it finally wound up, and that is when the Governor, whoever he was at the time, said, “Wait a minute, we’re not going to get into anything like this. This is too big for you. We don’t have anything in Idaho like this” So it was built by the U.S., and that is what happened.
Jerry Grover: And then operated by us. We moved John Parvin
Bruce Cannady: John still is alive. I’ve lost track because, I can’t believe that it’s been 30 years since all that stuff. You know, since I retired, except what was on board to build, I don’t think there is been anything built since then. They’ve talked about a couple up here, and I’ve often thought, if I was still working, if I was still working, I know of two of them in Washington that would have been built, and the State would have operated them. One of them was..............Niss….
Jerry Grover: Nisqually?
Bruce Cannady: Yeah.
Jerry Grover: Okay now, they did build that one, and the Indians are operating it because it’s on the reservation.
Pauline Cannady: Can I say something? I don’t know whether you want me to say it or not.
Jerry Grover: Pauline, wives are spouses and included.
Pauline Cannady: The idea of taking out the dams is going way back. They gave up with the buggies, and oh, you have to go ahead. You cannot turn back.
Bruce Cannady: Well, there are a whole lot of people who’d like to turn them back, take out all the dams.
Jerry Grover: That is a major issue. Were the impact of those dams on the fish evaluated?
Bruce Cannady: I was right in the middle of that. I was only 58, again, because I can tell you right now I would have been in there telling them that don’t be foolish now, don’t be foolish on this and leave it alone in the first place. The biggest mistake that was ever made right now is marking fish. We had enough data 30 years ago to know that about 90 percent of the fish come out of hatcheries and 10 percent are wild. That has never changed in 30 years; not one bit. And you know what with all that beautiful data, they could have stopped marking fish 30 years ago and say, 90 percent of these are fish hatchery, and you know, they wouldn’t be able to know the difference if they hadn’t marked, marked them all this time and clipped off a fin every time they did that.
Pauline Cannady: They had the poor little fish from the hatcheries that were three-fourths dead before they ever got into the water.
Jerry Grover: Well, I know when I was involved in the fin clipping thing, it was kind of addressed as the annual maiming program. The first thing that went was the adipose, and then you chose between a right or a left ventral.
Bruce Cannady: And now they keep arguing about, well these fish are not as good as the wild fish. Well why not?
Jerry Grover: You don’t believe that argument, Bruce?
Bruce Cannady: Do you think that you could take off a couple of fins and not harm them? That doesn’t even make sense.
Pauline Cannady: You think you could handle a little tiny fish and take all that...
Bruce Cannady: See, she is an old, she spent several springs marking fish.
Jerry Grover: You were part of the fish marking crew? Like a lot of the hatchery wives did that...
Pauline Cannady: Yes.
Jerry Grover: ...picked up a little part time money going down and clipping?
Bruce Cannady: Did Judy [Jerry’s wife] do any of that?
Jerry Grover: Yes, she did. She clipped fins at Coleman until she was blue in the face.
Pauline Cannady: I did it in California. Then I did it again in the state of Washington.
Bruce Cannady: But it was a good way to make money and work a few months.
Jerry Grover: Yeah, at the rate they paid you, it was always a little extra money.
Bruce Cannady: Sure.
Jerry Grover: And Judy, for example, split a job with another hatchery wife. I mean, we both had little kids, and so one would clip in the morning and look after the kids, and the other one would clip in the afternoon while the other one looked after the kids. They each got four hours work in, and so they had a little pocket money.
Bruce Cannady: Well, I thought it was great, but I still think if they’d just stop marking fish, they’d all be better off and save an awful lot of money. But I don’t know where it is going to go anyway. I have no idea.
Pauline Cannady: Well, they won’t have any fish if take out the dams, because it is going to rile up all that under the area, you know, and the fish can’t stand that.Bruce Cannady: All the sludge. They’ve got a lot of those going here in downtown Portland.
Jerry Grover: Dredging the Willamette River, you’re talking about?
Pauline Cannady: Yeah.
Jerry Grover: Stirring up the sediment.
Pauline Cannady: But a time when Bruce was still at the hatchery in the state of Washington, they cleaned up the <unclear>. It was all pure and clean, and I don’t know what, the first thing I know they just forget it. After they do something, they don’t think they have to maintain it. The same way with buildings. They feel like if they build it, why then they don’t have to do a thing to take care of it. From the date, if you buy a house...
Bruce Cannady: Maintenance programs have always been on the low lowest priority
Jerry Grover: And that was part of the areas you looked at too, the cyclical maintenance program, trying to get money just to...
Bruce Cannady: Just trying to get enough money to keep things going, and I remember that one year that I was in Washington, DC and I was talking to Abe Tunnison, [Chief, NFH System] and Abe knew the figures because he’d been with them for several years. He told me one day, he said, “You know, we’d like to have one and a half million dollars just in maintenance, and you know what we’re going to get?” I said, “What?” He said, “If we could just get a million and a half every year” When I went to the Corps when they brought in Dworshak the first year, I helped put the budget together with the Corps. I said, “I want a million dollars.” “A million dollars? It is brand new.” I said, “In the first place, we’re going to spend a million just correcting all the things that are not done right during construction, and then after that we need it just to keep things going well as we go along, because there will be a lot of things that we’ll find out that should have been done right during construction and wasn’t done,” And I said, “When we finally get through with this we will find out that we should have that ten percent from day one, not wait until about the 15th year and then try to catch up, because you never catch up.”
Jerry Grover: Good philosophy. How come that never sold, except with Dworshak?
Bruce Cannady: Because it’s maintenance. You will never solve a maintenance program anywhere because you don’t cut, clip clippings, I mean, cut ribbons like they do on a new one, whatever you...
Jerry Grover: Yes, okay. So even with Abe, you think Abe was an able leader as far as being able to get money into the budget? Was there a leadership problem in Washington, or is it just the acceptance of Congress?
Bruce Cannady: I don’t know about Abe or Carson. I didn’t know him, I didn’t know he as well as I did Tom Barnaby, and I always remember what Tom said once about people. He said, “You know, I was in research for 20, 25 years before I wound up as an administrator,” and he said, “I will tell you right now,” and by the way I did this for my 50th, I said, “Anyone that starts out to get a degree in anything should have to take administration, public administration, whatever. Just, if nothing else, a couple of classes as you go to know what budgets are and this sort of thing, because if you go in as an...
Pauline Cannady: Engineer.Bruce Cannady: Well, engineer or chemist or whatever, you are not even going to think about budgets or money or anything like that.” How many classes did you have in administration? Did you...
Jerry Grover: Bruce, I’d like to ask you about high points and low points on your caree with the Service..
Bruce Cannady: Good high points, and it seemed like every time something like Spring Creek finally fell into our lap and expanded Dworshak, but it seemed like every one of these was some kind of a high spot because I felt like, and the people and myself were really doing something well for everybody in the long, long run.
Jerry Grover: And the resource?
Bruce Cannady: And the resource. I’m still a hatchery man because I think that the people that thought up hatcheries 125 years ago were on the right track then, and they still are on the right track, and if they hadn’t have been on it I don’t know where we would be with Pacific salmon today. I’m still a hatchery man because I think that the people that thought up hatcheries 125 years ago were on the right track then, and they still are on the right track, and if they hadn’t been on it I don’t know where we would be with Salmon today.
Jerry Grover: Are you saying that without hatcheries you don’t think there’d be salmon in the Columbia River, for example?
Bruce Cannady: If they’d have never, if nobody had figured out a way to have hatcheries, what would have happened? Not very, nothing very good would have happened because they would have finished catching every salmon. They of course are doing that with others species too.
One of my big, one of my high spots, believe it or not, was coming to the Regional Office. I never expected to make it; never even thought of it for several years until I went, Pauline and I had gone to, down to New Orleans, all the ways down for a trip. I think it was May or June, and I had just got back. I was feeling pretty good. We’d had such a lot of fun and so forth. I said, “You know, we ought to do this more often,” and so on and so forth, and Al Kimmerick and Bill Hagen and, they <unclear> me, and one of the fellows, he was a predecessor of Abe Tunnison, I think he was there. I think there was three of us, and they had stopped, and we were going, I think we were going into lunch or something, and I’d gotten in the back seat. One of them was driving, and all at once one of them, we were just<unclear>, one of them turned around and said, “Would you mind going to Portland to the Regional Office one of these days?” That is a high spot.
Pauline Cannady: About his retirement, they had a retirement and all the, all those folks that he’d ever worked with in the state...
Bruce Cannady: That was the biggest, the biggest, were you here then?
Jerry Grover: No, I think in that year I would have been in DC and going through the Departmental training program, so I was not here.
Bruce Cannady: Well, I don’t think they’ve had another one after that that was as big as that. Art Hughey who also retired and I were in there. Art went first. Art knew, he was an engineer, and well, he knew the people inside the Service and a few others, but not really like I had. I couldn’t believe, the old Columbia Edgewater was absolutely crammed, and they had come from California and Nevada and all over the place. Pauline Cannady: All the states that he had representatives
Bruce Cannady: Every one that I’d ever worked with. Goddam, they showed up, and I tell you, it just made me feel good. Talk about a high spot, now there was a high spot.
Pauline Cannady: They gave him things. Yeah, that was nice, very nice
But for low points, I don’t know. I was disappointed when I didn’t get to be Regional Supervisor and Smith got it. That was kind of a blow because I thought I was told that I was going to get it. Ned Tuttle was retiring. I thought I was, turned out that it was a man in Washington had another idea, so that was that. And Smith and I got along very well through the years. I mean, we’re good friends. We play bridge together. He’s a better bridge player than I am.
Jerry Grover: If you had to categorize all those things that you did in your career, what was the most pressing issue that you had to address? Which is the button that seemed to push the hardest or lit up the biggest?
Bruce Cannady: My job here in the Regional Office.
Jerry Grover: It would be. Out of your career has there been someone, Bruce, that you could point to that had been a particular mentor or somebody that really influenced you, been helpful? Is there a single individual?
Bruce Cannady: Two of them. I think Al Kimmerick and Tom Barnaby. They were both, when I came into the Regional Office, they both had just been Assistant Regional Directors, and he [Tom] had moved into this new job at the same level as the Regional Director on this program they were going to have that had just started not too long after the war, doing something, not just hatcheries, everything, and of course still trying to do. He was in that. Of course, Tom Barnaby was Assistant Regional Director, both of them, for a long time. Now like I said earlier, I never thought of them as <unclear>. I liked them both, and I liked them so well that when I retired, (well they both retired ahead of me) when I retired, we kept right on visiting back and forth. In fact, up until a couple of years before Kimmerick died, we had a meeting down in southern Portland or else down at Salem once a month, just chewing the fat. People like Harland Johnson [Hatchery Biologist] was there all the time. We just got together. We liked each other, and kind of a friendship thing that was far beyond what ever we did at hatcheries. Both of them, for a long time.
Jerry Grover: It was far beyond co-workers or...
Pauline Cannady: Tell them about Harland Johnson having, once every fall we all got together.
Bruce Cannady: Yeah, you knew about Harland having annual meeting of retirees.
Jerry Grover: Yeah, I wasn’t a retiree when he was doing that, and then when I got retired, why, he had passed.
Bruce Cannady: Went down, God, he didn’t last long.
Pauline Cannady: Oh, we loved that. We all got together.
Bruce Cannady: Oh, yeah. You would have enjoyed that. Marv come to that every year too, after he retired. Marv was in about, I think he was in four or five years after I retired. I don’t really remember, but I remember him telling me once that, that he (and I didn’t know that until he told me a little later), he said, “You know, when I finally retired they were about ready to throw me out of here.” I said, “Youíre kidding!” “Well,” he said, “it wasn’t that. I can last as long as ever, but,” he said, “they had taken away a lot of things we used to do” Are they still doing those things like in hatcheries and so forth? Are they reorganizing?
Jerry Grover: Well, at the time that I think Marv was talking about was when they were reorganizing and going into Area Offices. The Regional Supervisor for Fisheries, a lot of the operations responsibilities going out to three Area Offices - one in Olympia, one in Boise, and one in Sacramento.
Bruce Cannady: That’s what he was talking about! And so they just, kind of eliminated the stuff that was being done in the Regional Office, and then talking with Marv, he was unhappy with that. They demoted him from a 14 to 13. He told me some about it, but I didn’t ask him too much. Well, I asked him what it was all about, but I don’t remember exactly, but that’s been 20 years ago or so.
Jerry Grover: Yeah, that was a trial for 5 years. They were reorganizing, they still are, Bruce. Things haven’t changed.
Bruce Cannady: Somebody told me awhile back about, and they were telling me, and I said, “Gee, that sounds like the one in 1957 when they called them Tom, Dick, and Harry.” Tom Barnaby, Dick Griffith, and Harry ?; he was the head of River Basins or whatever. He was one of them. They were the three original. They said, and I thought it, that was the way it was when I come in, and they said...
Jerry Grover: Reorganization, you’re talking about.
Bruce Cannady: Yes. They had that organization going for about four or five years, and then all at once they scrapped it and did something else, and they were telling me, he was describing what was going on, and I said, “Jesus, that sounds like the one they had in 1957.”
Jerry Grover: Well, how many reorganization changes did you see in the Service? You talk about the Tom, Dick, and Harry, and we were just mentioning area offices.
Bruce Cannady: I come in 1949...and the Bureau of Fisheries, and they didn’t, and the Wildlife people were over in a separate field. 1951, they pulled them back for the first time together.
Jerry Grover: Bureau of Sport Fisheries and Wildlife?
Bruce Cannady: Fish and Wildlife, yeah, Bureau of Sport Fisheries, no. No, this was the one ahead of that. They had that together. Then I went through that before I even left Leadville, and then when I came to, in fact, they finally were just getting their first people together into, I called Albuquerque. I was in Leadville. I was supposed to come out to Portland, and I’d waited for, they’d even stopped sending me checks. I tried this one and that one. They were out of the office. Well, I wound up [talking] to the Regional Director and I explained to him. He said, “I’ll get into it. I’ll let you know about it.” Boy, did he. Two days later I had my papers.
Pauline Cannady: They’d already shipped our furniture. We were without our furniture, sleeping on the floor.
Bruce Cannady: We shipped our furniture from Colorado clear out here to Washington, and I don’t know, I still don’t know where everything was or what they did, but I’ll tell you, he called and he must have moved somebody because I had papers and was on my way in two days. And then the next one [reorganization] they had was just before I came into the office because that was the Tom, Dick, and Harry, and Leo Lace and that group, and then they had another one. Well, that was a, that was in 1957. By 1958 and 9 was when they split the Commercial Fisheries out, away, and left us Bureau of Sport Fisheries and Wildlife in Washington,
Jerry Grover: And then the Bureau of Commercial Fisheries.
Bruce Cannady: That was the one, that was my second one, if you call it one. Yeah, that is my second one. Now, that went on until about the time I retired. They were already talking about another one, and right after that they set up these Regional or District Offices, or whatever they called them. When was this, about 1972 or 3?
Jerry Grover: 1971. Reorganization plan number four that the President signed creating NOAA and National Marine Fisheries Service, and they moved Commercial Fish over into there and called them NMFS
Pauline Cannady: That is when he retired.
Jerry Grover: And they dropped the name Sports Fisheries and Wildlife and just said Fish and Wildlife Service, which is what we’ve been since.
Bruce Cannady: Think they’ll ever bring them together?
Jerry Grover: Well, I understand Bruce, that last week Secretary Babbitt said they need to be together.
Pauline Cannady: There is another highlight. He had another highlight. He went to Red Bluff and he got there on the train, and he was getting off the train, and here was a band and everything, and he thought, “Whoa, a movie star probably is coming off.” He got off, and they were honoring him, the whole city. They gave him a Stetson and they, I don’t know what all they gave him.
Bruce Cannady: That was about two weeks before I retired, and I was...
Jerry Grover: That was because of Tehama-Colusa?
Bruce Cannady: A bunch from Red Bluff that I’ve gotten pretty well acquainted with being in and out of there, and I remember I was, got in late, about 6:00 or so, and what his name took me over to this, oh, there was about eight or ten in the group.
Jerry Grover: Was Dale Schonaman there then?
Bruce Cannady: Yeah, Schonaman. They had sandwiches, and we got to visiting and God, I guess 10:00 or so. So I kind of got acquainted with all these guys, and then all at once when they decided to have this affair they really bowled me over. I didn’t know about that at all. They just, that was right out of, I thought this band and everything, they were going t o have a parade of some kind. It turned out the whole damn thing was for me.
Jerry Grover: Overall, would you gauge that it’s been a good career and the Fish and Wildlife Service is good to work for?
Bruce Cannady: If I had to go over and do it again, I’m sure I would. I might like one or two of the spots we could do without, but what the hell, you have to take the good and the bad and the bad and the good, so...Jerry Grover: But there was more good than bad?
Bruce Cannady: <Unclear> was a good one, and I think that I had a lot to do with things. You’ve been in your career. You’re now retired. Can you look back and feel like you did a lot of good while you were there? You have to.
Jerry Grover: Oh, I do. I didn’t, you know, but some folks left with a red ass. You know, they walked out the door of the Fish and Wildlife Service and never looked back and I don’t feel that way at all. I gave 36 and a half years of my life. I felt good that I did. I liked the Fish and Wildlife Service. I too would do it again.
Bruce Cannady: Well, I used to say, if you don’t enjoy what you’re doing, by God you better get another line of work because it is only one road that you’re going down, and if you’re not going to be happy while you’re going, you better find another road of doing it.
Jerry Grover: Have you found people were jealous of the job that you had, envious?
Bruce Cannady: When I thought of it, I immediately discarded it because I thought that it was a waste of time trying to decide whether you were liked. When I was a boss, as a manager out there, you know when you’re in here it is different, it is a different deal. It’s like if you were in Washington; that is a different deal. Everything is different. When I was out there I always had, I used to say, you know, being a manager is the toughest job of all because you are trying to make people happy, and you can’t make people happy. I always remember Tom, or John Pelner. When I was leaving to come up to Carson he said, “Bruce, remember this: no matter what you do with those fellows, there is going to be days. They’re going to hate your guts,” and he’s right.
Pauline Cannady: He only had one fellow leave, and he didn’t want to fire him, but he was so incompetent.
Bruce Cannady: Ben Crosby.
Pauline Cannady: Yeah, so he brought him in and talked to him and everything like that. Finally, what did you do about him?
Bruce Cannady: I run into him once in Portland, and he was nice. Well, he was a tough guy to...
Pauline Cannady: A college fellow.
Bruce Cannady: He graduated from the University of Wyoming, and he was as out of his depth here as if he was in water 90 feet deep, and he had the nicest wife and they were, in fact when I said I, it was five and a half months, I said, “I’ve got to decide whether you’re going to go or not, and I think you ought to go, really.”
Pauline Cannady: They had six month probation.
Bruce Cannady: “You’ve just made enough mistakes that I think you ought to go, and I don’t like it.” And all he said, “Well, that is all right.” He said, “You know, we’re expecting a baby, and I wonder if I could stick around here for about another month or two” I said, Sure.” The only one that I can swear that I finally, and I always remember the people in the office. I told them that a couple of times that I had this problem and I might have to let him go and, “Oh yeah, we’ll back you up, fine and dandy. We’ll back you up.” Then when I had to drop it on the desk in paper, this guy is going oh, good God. They just turned around about this 180 degrees. I’m sure you had, you were in that same spot a few times.
Bruce Cannady: I have known people like Pelner and so on. Benny Cox –did you know Benny?
Jerry Grover: I knew Benny. Knew John when I was at Coleman. John would come by and coach the running of the hatchery down there.
Bruce Cannady: Yeah, and you knew, of course you knew Harland.
Jerry Grover: I knew Harland and Steve Leak, who was his assistant.
Bruce Cannady: He surprised me. He left a little sooner than I thought he would, so I, that was before you came in. I’m trying to think, you were, who did you follow?
Jerry Grover: Well, I came to the Region three different times, Bruce.
Bruce Cannady: You would think when you talk about a hatchery, we always want to go get one of these guys that’s out of the eighth grade somewhere. But I was wanting to get college graduates. I was meeting with Bill Hagen, Chief of Fish Hatcheries and he was describing the great benefit of college graduates with fishery science degrees. And when he got through expounding this he said, “What do you think? “ And I could talk faster I guess, always than Tuttle, but I said, “When and how much, you kidding. We will take six.” He said, “No, I’m not kidding.” I said, “I tell you, we’ve got to get these kind of people in.” Yes sir, and he said, “Fine and dandy.”
Now, about this time, Jimmy Warren came wandering into the office. He come wandering in the office in an Army uniform looking for a job. That’s how he came to be aboard with us because boy, I’d began to snap these people right up, right now. I didn’t know who he was or what he was like, but I always remember that I asked for six people, and I got them. You can name them probably today, Bill Walsdorf was one of them. Okay. I know Ken Higgs would have to be in that crowd or close to it. Russ Ferg, Paul Hemrick, Einer Wold, Jack Kinchloe. I’m trying to think, I don’t know my names anymore.
Jerry Grover: You said Jim Warren.
Bruce Cannady: He wasn’t one of that six. He was extra, and there was another one. But that is when we got them in. The minute they graduated we sent them through this two years plan. You worked at the hatchery one year, then you’d go to Courtland In-service fish nutrition training school and then you’d go to Leetown fish health course, or vice versa, and all of that come right of that little conversation that we had with Bill Hagen. It was Bill Hagen that did it, and he did it there in about five minutes.
Jerry Grover: That seemed like that was a major change or a major move for the Fish and Wildlife Service and Fish Hatcheries. It changed forever the look of the Fish and Wildlife Service
Pauline Cannady: You went to the college and talked to fellows.
Bruce Cannady: What was the big guy that was at Carson?
Jerry Grover: Don Zirjacks.Bruce Cannady: No, he was bigger. He went to, he went to school, but he went to Boston. He was in Boston, and then he came back out here. He was, he was a trainee, but it was some kind.
Jerry Grover: Don Zirjacks. He never got a degree. He was in the GS-488 series, but
they converted them all. He was grandfathered in, and he still was a hatchery manager, and he managed Carson...
Bruce Cannady: At one time I knew these guys and I knew the program, and I’d been there, I was in there from day one.
I had some criticism from different ones. I always remember Tuttle said once, he said, “You know, at one time we always thought if a guy worked hard he would go right on up until he became a manager.” I said, “Well, that has nit changed, we still have a bunch of people doing the same things.”
Jerry Grover: Well, it kind of kick started these college graduates because instead of starting as a Fish Culturist 1 or a GS-1, you started them out as a GS-5. They got up a few ladder rungs. Did you see any conflict with the people on board when you started bringing these college people in, because you were showing them some favoritism by bringing them in at a higher grade and then sending them to Courtland or Leetown after one year?
Bruce Cannady: I talked to some of them at the time and I said, You know, at least for a few years and probably as long as you’re working you will have the same chance as any one else, it’s just going to be a little bit tougher, and it was, of course. We got some very good people.
God, I thought once, I spent an evening with Ken Higgs, and we got into two or three arguments about this and that, and I was absolutely amazed. He was so goddamn smart. I mean, he knew what he was talking about, and that was the kind of people I wanted in the hatchery program.
Jerry Grover: Good. They all turned out to be successful, turned out to be managers or hatchery biologists or station biologists like Walsdorf.
Bruce Cannady: I never really knew them before. I had them on paper, and we picked them. I always remember that when they went to work, all six of them, I told Ned one day, I said, “You know, we’re going to be lucky if we keep two of these people.” And several years later I said, “I’ll be damned, we kept all six of them.” Wasn’t that something? But that was a good, that was a good program.
I don’t know how it went in the other part of the system, whether Bill did the same, but Bill, God, he told me later, he said, “Boy you just went for this hand over fist, just wanted it badly.” He said, “Here I thought maybe people would be against this, and you weren’t” Well, I said, no, anybody in their right mind would go for this kind of a program. It is going to cost some money, and I said, “Bill,” I said, “I don’t worry about it.” And we didn’t.
Jerry Grover: This was the professionalization of the Fish Hatchery program, bringing in the college graduates.
Jerry Grover: You didn’t lie to these guys, did you?
Bruce Cannady: No.
Jerry Grover: To get them on board? See, I was told, I was working as a Fisheries Management Biologist in California doing professional and scientific fisheries management things. Fish hatcheries people were thought of as a kind of like, a low life. They were the ones that would shoot a doe deer out of season, you know, and probably would keep an undersized fish if they caught it and hide it. I was hired back in Region 5. I was told you were going to be a Fisheries Management Biologist in this poor, backward state of West by God Virginia, you know, the land of John L. Lewis and the coal miners and the unions and screwed up habitat, and they needed professional biologists back there, but you’ll be stationed at a hatchery in White Sulphur Springs. I go back there, and guess what my first job was? I was sweeping fish shit out of the ponds.
Bruce Cannady: That wasn’t always fun.
Jerry Grover: Then I got into high tech grass cutting.
Pauline Cannady: When Bruce was at Cortland, New York, they tried to talk him into staying there and taking over the hatchery portion of the training school
Bruce Cannady: Art Phillips wanted me to stay there.
Pauline Cannady: And boy, I tell you, that weather.
Bruce Cannady: John Maxwell was already going to go, they already had made up their mind that John was going to go to the office in Boston, and he wanted me to stay. Well, it was the same job that a couple years later that Ray Vaughan had.
Jerry Grover: Okay, I didn’t remember Ray being at Cortland. I remember him being at Lamar.
Bruce Cannady: Yeah, he was at Cortland before he went to Lamar. Anyway, I said, “I don’t want to do that. I’m a westerner and I’ve been here a year, and I’ve enjoyed every minute of it, but I’d like to go home.” I told them I just feel like a long way from home. So he let me go home, but I, you know, Art, I don’t know how many times I think he had dinner with us in Portland here, a couple of three times. Well, what else?
Jerry Grover: Stories. You talk about Cookie, the manager at the Creston, MT, hatchery. There is always so many stories told about Cookie. Are any of those true, you suppose? About the one, I can remember one about a...
Bruce Cannady: Did you ever read, did you ever happen to read one of his letters? He would write. Don’t know whether I ever, I’m sure I told you. He’d write epistles.
Jerry Grover: Yes, one that... They should have framed those things.
Bruce Cannady: He’d start in and he’d write, and about the time that he’d sign the goddamn thing he’d have an afterthought, so he would write up on the side of the page, and then he would have another one and he’d write it on the other side, write it along the bottom. He would turn it over and God, he’d have these addendums would just go on and on and on, and most of, I don’t know why he even bothered about writing, and I don’t know that he ever, you know, in the office. He’d have the people all doing this and that, and he would be out feeding the fish. He loved to feed the fish. He was a manager, so he got to feed the fish.
Jerry Grover: The fun part. On the letters again, I understand everything. I’ve heard that same story about Cookie writing the letters in big long epistles. He’d write on the back side, he’d add a second page and then he would say, “Oh heck, forget the whole thing, I’ve changed my mind.” Then he would sign it and send it in.Did you ever...
Bruce Cannady: I tell you, he was a classic.
Jerry Grover: He was also the guy, I heard the story about him looking over the surplus property list, always trying to find some he needed at the hatchery for free. There was this drilling machine in Seattle and he said, “God that would be just what they needed in the shop,” and so he puts in a request and gets it shipped there, and the guy from, from the train station called and said he had a delivery for the hatchery, and he said, “I’ll be right down and pick it up.” The train station guy said, “What do you mean, it is on two flat cars.” Well, this drilling machine was something for 16 inch guns that came out of the Naval base in Seattle, and then Cookie had to pay to send that darn thing back, which was a bunch of money.
Bruce Cannady: I remember the story, but I had forgotten all about it, but that is him exactly, he was going to get this little thing and wound up he had two flat cars. Hell’s fire, he had to get a drag line crane to move anything like that, but that was Cookie. He, oh boy, and I tell you, I’ll tell one story about him. I generally would like to stay in a hotel, but this time, particular time when I said I’m coming, why old Cookie says, “Well, be sure and stay with us,” and I started to hesitate and he said, “No, I’m not taking no for an answer. You’ve got to stay with us.” So I told him all right. So I spent the night with him. His wife, I’m trying to think what her name is, I can’t think, but anyway, then I said something later about it and they said, “Oh Jesus, she is the best cook in the world.” I got it. Oh boy, was she a cook.
Jerry Grover: Well there were some characters in the Fish and Wildlife Service up and down the river, and there is some hard drinking, hard poker playing.
Bruce Cannady: You knew, I think you did, Bob McElrath. His wife, his wife... Well, she lives over here at the coast at Manzanita.
Jerry Grover: What about other old characters on the river here in the system? John Pelner was one. He is kind of, I don’t know whether there is any stories...
Bruce Cannady: John and I had a falling out and I’ve always regretted it, and its one of those things that I just had a brainstorm that I should’nt have, something else. John and I had been very good friends ever since I knew him, almost except for the very last before he retired. When I left Battle Creek and went up to Coleman, John and I, John didn’t want me to come up there at all. He later changed his mind and in fact, I found out later that of all the people that did him. When I left Battle Creek and went up to Coleman, John did not recommend anybody to be promoted. I was one of the very few that John did. He thought that was all right. When I first got up there, I’d only worked there about two weeks. It was spring and we began to change things around, and I had to get a crew out here to work, clean and whatever they were doing, and I sent them out. We’d had some bad weather, and we hadn’t done anything for a couple, three days. Well all at once this morning we have nice weather, so I sent a crew out there, and then I walked up to the hatchery and ran into John, and John began to give me hell because these people were not working and they were supposed to be out working, and by God, what are you doing, blah, blah, blah. John really, he could do this and I waited until he ran down, and then I really told him off. He had made me mad, so I made him mad right back because I pointed out, “There are four men out there working right now and doing what I’ve already told them. Now what are you talking about?” Blah, blah, and he turned around and he apologized, and we, I had already been told for years that John, if he’d ever get on top of you he’d just beat you right into the ground. I had made up my mind that was never going to happen to me even if I had to leave town. So I waited for him when I got this time, and then I took care of him. Well anyway, it went on until after he retired, and I get this notice that instead of, he had a home down in Red Bluff, but he was staying there, and that was against that particular required occupancy rule for hatchery housing at the time. Now as it happened, not long after that, the thing came up with Benny Cox at Spring Creek and I did what I should have done the first time with John, and I didn’t. I told Benny, I called him and told him, I said, “You are not supposed to do this.” “Well,” he said, “I’m kind of in a bind”, and I said, “Just leave it alone.” So I went to the Chief of Administration and... So I got an okay and we handled it all verbally, and he was gone in a couple of weeks and everything was taken care of. But in John’s case, instead of me doing what I should have done the second time, I told him what I’m what am I going to do, words like this. So for some reason, Tuttle was gone, and I wrote a letter and went to have the Regional Director sign it. John Finley got it. He sent it back. He said, “Oh!” I said, ”It’s the rule. What are we going to do about it?” He said, “Well I don’t know, it’s kind of your problem. If you want to write a letter, go ahead.” That was a mistake. That was my, his first mistake, and mine was listening to him because I went ahead and I wrote the letter and I signed it as Acting Regional Supervisor, and John never forgave me.
Jerry Grover: Basically you told him to move back on the hatchery or move out, retire.
Bruce Cannady: Something like that. And instead, he compounded it. What he should have done was given me a ring and said, “Jesus, I’m in a trouble,” and we would have worked it out, and I would have taken the second route and got him out of it. Instead, the last time I saw John he was still mad. I ran into him in Red Bluff at something or other and he made some remark, and I said, “John, I’m sorry,” because at the time it was just one of those things probably shouldn’t have happened, but it did, but he never forgave me.
Jerry Grover: John, what I remember of John Pelner, at least in his later years, that he always smoked these roll-your-own cigarettes, and he always set back, and there was always little sparks. He didn’t have a shirt that didn’t look like it had been shot with a shot gun. I mean, just full of little burnt holes.
Bruce Cannady: Yeah, oh yes. John was, I tell you, I loved John. I liked him, and we got along fine, and I always regretted that last damn incident that, I didn’t have any idea that he would react like he would, that he would do something or other, maybe call or whatever, and I look back, I think, Jesus, I should have called him first, you know and said, “Look, you’re in trouble on and you’re causing me a lot of trouble. We’ve got to work something out here.” I just did it wrong.
Jerry Grover: I’m going end the interview here. I appreciate you taking the time to talk with me and share your life. Many thanks!

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O R A L H I S T O R Y
BRUCE CANNADY
FISHERY RESOURCES PROGRAM - HATCHERIES
Interview
by
JERRY C. GROVER
March 23, 2000
Portland, Oregon
Oral History Program
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
National Conservation Training Center
Shepherdstown, West Virginia
Bruce Cannady at age 95ABSTRACT: Bruce Cannady played a significant role in the siteing, funding and construction of major new and reconstructed fish hatcheries in the Pacific Northwest. These hatcheries located on Indian reservations and along major water courses doubled the annual release of Pacific salmonids to enhance Tribal benefits and meet mitigation objectives of Federal water development projects. He also played a major role in the professionalization of the hatchery manager cadre in the selection of college graduate fishery biologists and developing a training program for the entry level personnel into the National Fish Hatchery system. He retired as a Deputy Assistant Regional Directory for the National Fish Hatcheries in the Pacific Northwest with 32 years of service. Notable, as of January 2009 his 32 years of service has resulted in 38 years of retirement as he approaches his 97th birthday.
Oral History
Interview with Bruce Cannady (age 89) (and his wife Pauline – age 92)
At his home in Portland, Oregon
Interviewed by: Jerry C. Grover
March 23, 2000
Jerry Grover: I’m talking with Bruce Cannady, retired Deputy Regional Supervisor for Fish Hatcheries for Region 1, the Pacific Region, and his wife Pauline.
Bruce Cannady: I was born in 1912 in Central Park, Nebraska. I went to high school in a small school at McGrew, which is in the country. Dad was a farmer
Jerry Grover: How did you meet Pauline?
Bruce Cannady: Another gal and I had split up is the best way I can say, and I went back over to McGrew and I knew there was a dance, and I went to the dance, and there was a girl there and I met her.
Pauline Cannady: She was a teacher he knew. First we went to the church, didn’t we?
Bruce Cannady: No, we were at Albertine’s Place.
Pauline Cannady: Well, they said that they were going to have a dance afterwards, so we went there. I went with another fellow, but I got there and I kept dancing with Bruce. I thought he was the one that brought me.
Bruce Cannady: And then she was surprised when the dance broke up and Aldin showed up, and he said, “Well, we’re ready to go,” and Pauline looked at me kind of surprised. I liked her.
Pauline Cannady: Bruce lived in town, but Aldin lived out in the country and he’d come in to see me, and Bruce would come right over.Jerry Grover: So after that it didn’t take long I take it, that the love birds kind of got in you...
Bruce Cannady: She moved to Scotts Bluff. I was in the town of Bayard, and that’s where she had graduated from high school. I worked at the sugar factory there as a chemist. And then I finally decided she was right for me in 1934, and boy things are really, anyway, I’m trying to think. I went to Scotts Bluff. I was at the factory for five years at Bayard, and then I was up there for two years. Oh, I was still at Bayard after we got married because I stayed with her mother. We only saw each other at the weekends because she was working in Scotts Bluff and I was working in Bayard. So we got married.
Pauline Cannady: He’s younger than I am, and I didn’t want to marry a younger fellow.
Bruce Cannady: Yeah, we got married, 65 years of it. We got married when I was only 21. I tell you, the reason, one of the reasons I got married is it was right in the middle of, I got a job over here and she had a job here, and we, and I had to walk about eight blocks, and we’d get together in the evening, and I’d walk home, and I finally said along in the spring, I said, you know, this is the silliest thing in the world. You know, in these days you just shack up and let it go at that. Well, those days you didn’t do it that way. So I said one day, “You know, this is silly. We’re both paying rent and maybe we ought to just get married and move together, and we would have more money and not be spending it for rent.” Pauline surprised me. She said, “You know, that sounds like a pretty good idea.” We waited, remember, we waited until the Fourth of July.
Pauline Cannady: Yeah, we both got days off. We got married the third of July in the evening
Bruce Cannady: We waited about six weeks, and we both had the time off on, lets see, what was it, Saturday and Sunday. We got married on Friday evening so we could go somewhere over the weekend, which we did. Well, we didn’t want to wait until the fourth.
Jerry Grover: How long was it then you started, the kids started coming along then?
Bruce Cannady: Seven and a half years, one. No, she had told me, I believe it was before me, when we began to think about, you know the future, and she advised me that there would never be any children because she had broken, had her back broken the year she got out of high school.
Pauline Cannady: The doctor told me be sure and tell my boyfriend if we got engaged, think of it to tell him that I may not be able to have any children. So I did. Well, we didn’t want any children then anyway.
Depression time!
Bruce Cannady: So we went along and then, and then when I went to work for the government, we’d been here two, two and a half years and we made a trip out West and that was the first time we’d never been on the West Coast, and so I said, “Why don’t we move out to Washington?” And I managed that, got all set up, moved in out here in the spring. We’d come back to Leadville and things were beginning to get to where I was getting to be moved, and then she said she was pregnant.
So we left Leadville and got out here, and he was born in May. We landed out here in November, and Mike was born in May.
Jerry Grover: Did you have lots of sisters and brothers? Did you grow up with sisters?
Pauline Cannady: Yes, I had five sisters and two brothers.Jerry Grover: What about you, Bruce?
Bruce Cannady: I only had one brother, and he’s seven and a half years younger than I am. We both started out in Nebraska. I wound up with the Federal service, wandering around and finally landed in Portland. He got a job out of Nebraska with Boeing up here at the end of the war. When he got out of that, he got his degree at the University of Washington and went to work in Seattle; wound up finally as Assistant Planning Director here in Portland for the City of Portland. And so we both wound up a few blocks from each other. We started in a different place and wound up in the same place doing different things.
Jerry Grover: You were living in Scotts Bluff, Nebraska, and you’re applying for a job with the Fish and Wildlife Service.
Bruce Cannady: I was expecting an answer, and here I am reading this letter about Fish and Wildlife Service, and I don’t even understand what I’m trying to read . I just figured, well, I’d forgotten about it. But as it happens, I was caught, when was it, about in March. Didn’t really have a job. So I said, well, what shall I do? Pauline says, “Why don’t we go over and just ask for a job, and maybe we can go over to Denver or somewhere.” She was working at the time at Woolworth’s in Scotts Bluff, Nebraska. Wound up with that idea when we went up to Leadville, Colorado that if after three months, if we didn’t like it, we’d go back to Denver to look around.
Jerry Grover: Are these summer months or winter months?
Bruce Cannady: We went up on the 4th of April, 1939, and I wound up getting a job for 32 years instead of three months, and stayed at Leadville National Fish Hatchery for about two and a half years. They sent me out to Carson National Fish Hatchery, Washington. It was a beautiful little place, but I tell you, they couldn’t raise fish there at all, really, because they didn’t have any ponds. So we were there one year, sent to California to Coleman National Fish Hatchery. We were there five and a half years. My first year there, I was at the old hatchery, Battle Creek substation that they finally closed. Then I went up to the main Coleman station and stayed there until 1948, and then they sent us to, back believe it or not back to Carson again. Pauline had no more idea of wanting to go back to Carson than the man in the moon. But then we were there one year, and then they sent us to Cortland.
Jerry Grover: What grade were you hired in at when you went to Leadville, Bruce?
Bruce Cannady: When I was at Leadville, and an unknown thing at that time, I think they called it the Apprentice Fish Culturist.
Pauline Cannady: Apprentice Fish Culturist.
Bruce Cannady: Yeah, Apprentice Fish Culturist, and I was in that, what, two years.
Pauline Cannady: And they, they could have you leave after what, six months if they weren’t satisfied.
Bruce Cannady: Yeah, the old probationary period. And then when I landed back at Carson, I was called a Junior Fish Culturist, and then when I went to Battle Creek, what did they call it then? They called...
Pauline Cannady: Assistant Superintendent.
Bruce Cannady: No, Senior Fish Culturist, I don’t remember exactly. I wasn’t in charge. I was working for......, he died, and then I was acting manager for three or four months.Pauline Cannady: He was dying of cancer, and so Bruce...
Bruce Cannady: Can you remember his name? Isn’t that awful? That is my problem anymore. And then I was there, oh, about a year when I went up to Coleman, and I worked then as a foreman, something like that, foreman fish culturist? No, it wasn’t that. Foreman what? I was in charge of, they had this thing all cut up in some fashion and I don’t really remember, but I was... Anyway, I was there, what, five years. Then they sent me as the manager at Carson. I felt pretty good because I’d, come in and not knowing anything about what I was getting into, and nine years later I was manager, and most of the fellows around there had either never made manager or they made it later.
Jerry Grover: Were those GS grades at that time, with Manager?
Bruce Cannady: I was a 6 I think, at that time. Yeah, I know I was a 6 because just a year or two later they moved us, and we had to do it twice. We moved from a 7 and then to a 9, and that was about, well, I’d been at Carson, I’d been to Cortland [,New York Training School] and back. I went as a 6. God, that ís what everybody was, GS-5 or 6. Then we come back as a, and I come back as a 9 about a year later. Well, a 7 and then a 9, and I was there from 1948 to Cortland and back...
Pauline Cannady: 1957.
Bruce Cannady: And in 1957 I came..and in 1957 I came...
Pauline Cannady: We came to Walker.
Jerry Grover: Where were you between 1950 and 1957? Were you at Carson or at Cortland?
Bruce Cannady: Seven years...
Pauline Cannady: They remodeled it all for them ponds and...
Jerry Grover: In Carson?
Pauline Cannady: He was heading up all that remodeling.
Jerry Grover: Okay, they had just the three houses that were there.
Bruce Cannady: Oh yeah, but they built the other houses and put in ponds. That was done when I was there.
Pauline Cannady: And all those ponds.
Jerry Grover: Okay, and then you came, in 1957 then you came to the Regional Office in Portland, Oregon.
Bruce Cannady: I came in as Assistant Regional Supervisor in 1957.
Jerry Grover: What grade was that?
Bruce Cannady: It was a GS-12. Well, I came in as 11. Let’s see, again, I was a 9. I had to wait a year, got my 11, and then another year to 12. But that is what practically everybody was having to do if they moved into the office, because you know, they’ve always had this little problem of when people are promoted, and I held there until, well I was a GS-13 when I retired.Pauline Cannady: You had gone to Washington, DC between that time.
Bruce Cannady: 1950, after I’d been there three years, they sent me to Washington, DC in a training program. I was here, well first they called me in about September and kept me in Washington until December. Then I came home; I was home 17 day. They sent me back in for a training program, middle management training from January until June, and then I come back to Portland and they...
Pauline Cannady: He wouldnít stay there.
Bruce Cannady: Now, let me tell that story in my way. When I come back to Portland, they wanted me to go back to Washington and stay there and take my chances on wherever I wanted. I felt I had a couple of things that was wrong. First, I didn’t have a degree which was never, I always figured that was going to always be three strikes on me anyway because practically, well I think everybody had.
Jerry Grover: You didn’t have a fisheries degree or you didn’t have a college degree?
Bruce Cannady: I didn’t have a college degree.
Pauline Cannady: Some college classes but……..
Bruce Cannady: Oh, I had some here and there, and even when I was in Washington, DC up there in that middle management I picked up six credits in George Washington University. And anyway, people, including Abe Tunnison and Ray Johnson, Bill Hagen all wanted me to come back there, and I was a little reluctant, very reluctant in fact, because the more I thought, the more I’m probably going to wind up with a Washington office career. And I liked it here. I had a home here.
Pauline Cannady: But there was, you also liked the hatcheries and they weren’t so interested in hatcheries.
Bruce Cannady: Well, you spent your time in Washington, DC, and you know that it’s different.
Jerry Grover: I had two trips, yes.
Bruce Cannady: It’s a different climate.
Jerry Grover: Yes, it is.
Bruce Cannady: Completely different climate.
Jerry Grover: Well, the people at the time, did Bill Hagen have a college degree?
Bruce Cannady: Oh, yes. Everybody had it.
Jerry Grover: Everybody. The people that were back there then, so you were, you felt out of place?
Bruce Cannady: Well, when I was in Portland, the Assistant Director, I mean, Assistant Regional Director Barnaby had his masters and he begged me to go to Washington, and I kept telling him I could go and I’m sure I’m smart enough, but I know a few people in Washington that would resent the hell out of anybody that would even think they should have any kind of a promotion, and I’m not going to get into this, and I didn’t.Pauline Cannady: And so when he come home, they called me and talked to me, tried to, said, “Get him to come to Washington.”
Jerry Grover: Who was that? Is that Barnaby or was it Bill Hagen?
Pauline Cannady: No, I don’t know.
Bruce Cannady: Bill Hagen sat, stood in my house one evening, told Pauline, “Goddam it, you’ve got to get him to go back there or he’s just going to sit here and rot.” So I sat here and rotted.
Pauline Cannady: And he enjoyed it.
Jerry Grover: Okay. So now you’re out here. You were, you said you came out when you came back from Washington DC under the training program. You came back as what, essentially the same job?
Bruce Cannady: When I came here, see, when I came here in 1957, Ned Tuttle was the Supervisor of Hatcheries, and I was the Assistant, and that was it. There was two of us was all. Just before I left in 1960 to go back to this, that, and the other, Marv Smith came in. I approved him in fact. He had to have my approval because we’ve got to have a man; “what would you think of Marv Smith?” I thought he would be great. Anyway and then he came and I, I had to leave, and I was gone about eight months or so, or nine. So the two of them handled it then. So when I come back for the first time, we had three. Well a little later, (I don’t remember just when) Ray Vaughan came in and worked for us a couple of years, and then Paul Handy. Galen [Buterbaugh] was here. Oh, we had a lot of nice people going through here and going up, and up, and up. Paul Handy and John Miller were here up until the time I retired. I was the, somewhere in there, I became a, the Deputy, it isn’t Deputy, what do they call it? Anyway, Tuttle was the Supervisor of Hatcheries, and I was the Assistant, and that was it.
Pauline Cannady: You were working with then.
Bruce Cannady: Well, this, this was a little different. This, about five years before I retired, which would be about 1966, Kimmerick, when I came into Washington. He said, “one of these days I’m going to be going, and I’ve been into building hatcheries. Whatever has been going on, and you better kind of watch and do whatever you have to do as you go along because this is going to happen.” Well, he was right because about 1960, I don’t know, mid-í60's was when we had, began to build things like the big one out at Spring Creek.
Jerry Grover: The rebuilding the Spring Creek.
Bruce Cannady: And the one out at Dworshak.
Jerry Grover: Dworshak Hatchery. Before that, Kooskia NFH.
Bruce Cannady: Well, I also was into it for the State of Oregon here at Bonneville Dam. I was into some of the work that was being done in the Warm Springs reservation, down in California at the spawning channel at Red Bluff. I had Quinault and Makah Hatcheries up in northwest Washington, that was, Dan Slater agreed to have that. Well, and then I kind of helped out here and there on that, and anyway...
Jerry Grover: So you were basically into the construction money bag, organizing?
Bruce Cannady: That was the last five years I was working; I had a hand in, and one of the reasons I retired. We began to, we planned to move on these hatcheries that where were beginning to be constructed or were already half finished or wherever we were. One day the Corps of Engineers called me from Walla Walla and started telling me about the hatcheries that they were going to have built in eastern Washington, what they called, oh what was the name of these?
Jerry Grover: That would be the Lower Snake River Compensation Plan.
Bruce Cannady: They wanted me too, they said. I said, “good Lord, this will take five years just to get the thing lined up and get people thinking it would be a good idea, and I’m not going to wait that long to retire.” And they kept bothering me so I retired, and it was never built. It was not planned. It would have been if I had been there, I think, but I don’t know, because I didn’t stay long enough.
Interviewers Note: The Lower Snake Compensation Plan hatchery system was built and is operating as a joint venture between the Federal Corps of Engineers, the construction agency, the Fish & Wildlife Service, the budgeting & technical administrative agency and the States of Idaho and Washington, the operating entities.
Jerry Grover: So you retired then in 1971.
Bruce Cannady: Yeah. I was 58 years old. 32 years of service, and I had planned to wait until I was at least, well, maybe even 62, certainly 60, and the day that I went down to tell John Finely that I was going to retire, you wouldn’t believe it. We ate lunch, John and Gib Basset and a little group of us, and one of them said, “Hell, you’re not going to retire because we don’t even have any word about that.” The other one said, “Oh yes, we did.” It just fell on his lap just about 20 minutes ago.
Pauline Cannady: You .
Bruce Cannady: Oh, that is another hatchery.
Jerry Grover: Lahontan, in Nevada.
Bruce Cannady: Yeah, I was in on the end of that one too. I was into, I suppose I could sit down and probably count, there was probably eight of them, at least.
Jerry Grover: And if they weren’t built brand new they were reconstructed, like Spring Creek.
Bruce Cannady: Yeah, but some of them were new. Quinault was new. And Makah, yeah. And so was Warm Springs for the tribe. And the one in California was new, Tehama-Colusa, the spawning channel. The Russian River. That was one that California ended up operating. It was a Corps of Engineers project.
Well, most of the time I knew who was going to operate. The one that finally come out that I thought was going to be built by the State, fell apart and we wound up with Spring Creek [National Fish Hatchery]. It was just one of those things. Because I was working with the states and we all knew what the policies were, and we might argue and talk about it, but when we got down to talking finally, like Bonneville Dam, there was no question about where it was going to be and how much it was going to be. But they were expecting one person to kind of carry the ball.
Jerry Grover: They, the Corps?
Bruce Cannady: When I began working with the Corps, hardly anybody was speaking with the Fish and Wildlife Service. It took me three years to get some fences mended, and when I finally got the fences mended with a lot of other help, guess what? --you just stood back and got out of the way, because they were going to build places like Dworshak whether you wanted it or not..Jerry Grover: Well, Dworshak, as I understand it, was going to be a state operated hatchery until halfway through and then Idaho backed out. Was that a surprise?
Bruce Cannady: Not really, because I was almost sure that the Federal Government was going to build it because I had been talking along with the Corps, and we were talking about the State. We had to pay the state of Idaho, keeping the state aboard on every meeting we had and it was all at once clear. They said, “Jesus, this thing is going to be pretty big, isn’t it?” And I said, “You better believe it”. “Well, who is going to finance it?” And I said, “Well, that is something we have to begin to work out pretty soon, because there is going to be a lot of money involved.” Well what really broke it, I don’t know who the boss was, but he is one of the people that came in and he said, “Well, what we want to do is for you to give us the money and we will go ahead and build it.” And I said, “You people are foolish. If they ask you, like, we’ll say four million dollars short, and you’re three-fourths finished, what are you going to do then, dig up your own money? I said, “The Corps will never do that.” “Well, what will you do?” I said, “Just tell the Corps to build it, and it doesn’t matter.” It wound up ten million dollars is what it finally wound up, and that is when the Governor, whoever he was at the time, said, “Wait a minute, we’re not going to get into anything like this. This is too big for you. We don’t have anything in Idaho like this” So it was built by the U.S., and that is what happened.
Jerry Grover: And then operated by us. We moved John Parvin
Bruce Cannady: John still is alive. I’ve lost track because, I can’t believe that it’s been 30 years since all that stuff. You know, since I retired, except what was on board to build, I don’t think there is been anything built since then. They’ve talked about a couple up here, and I’ve often thought, if I was still working, if I was still working, I know of two of them in Washington that would have been built, and the State would have operated them. One of them was..............Niss….
Jerry Grover: Nisqually?
Bruce Cannady: Yeah.
Jerry Grover: Okay now, they did build that one, and the Indians are operating it because it’s on the reservation.
Pauline Cannady: Can I say something? I don’t know whether you want me to say it or not.
Jerry Grover: Pauline, wives are spouses and included.
Pauline Cannady: The idea of taking out the dams is going way back. They gave up with the buggies, and oh, you have to go ahead. You cannot turn back.
Bruce Cannady: Well, there are a whole lot of people who’d like to turn them back, take out all the dams.
Jerry Grover: That is a major issue. Were the impact of those dams on the fish evaluated?
Bruce Cannady: I was right in the middle of that. I was only 58, again, because I can tell you right now I would have been in there telling them that don’t be foolish now, don’t be foolish on this and leave it alone in the first place. The biggest mistake that was ever made right now is marking fish. We had enough data 30 years ago to know that about 90 percent of the fish come out of hatcheries and 10 percent are wild. That has never changed in 30 years; not one bit. And you know what with all that beautiful data, they could have stopped marking fish 30 years ago and say, 90 percent of these are fish hatchery, and you know, they wouldn’t be able to know the difference if they hadn’t marked, marked them all this time and clipped off a fin every time they did that.
Pauline Cannady: They had the poor little fish from the hatcheries that were three-fourths dead before they ever got into the water.
Jerry Grover: Well, I know when I was involved in the fin clipping thing, it was kind of addressed as the annual maiming program. The first thing that went was the adipose, and then you chose between a right or a left ventral.
Bruce Cannady: And now they keep arguing about, well these fish are not as good as the wild fish. Well why not?
Jerry Grover: You don’t believe that argument, Bruce?
Bruce Cannady: Do you think that you could take off a couple of fins and not harm them? That doesn’t even make sense.
Pauline Cannady: You think you could handle a little tiny fish and take all that...
Bruce Cannady: See, she is an old, she spent several springs marking fish.
Jerry Grover: You were part of the fish marking crew? Like a lot of the hatchery wives did that...
Pauline Cannady: Yes.
Jerry Grover: ...picked up a little part time money going down and clipping?
Bruce Cannady: Did Judy [Jerry’s wife] do any of that?
Jerry Grover: Yes, she did. She clipped fins at Coleman until she was blue in the face.
Pauline Cannady: I did it in California. Then I did it again in the state of Washington.
Bruce Cannady: But it was a good way to make money and work a few months.
Jerry Grover: Yeah, at the rate they paid you, it was always a little extra money.
Bruce Cannady: Sure.
Jerry Grover: And Judy, for example, split a job with another hatchery wife. I mean, we both had little kids, and so one would clip in the morning and look after the kids, and the other one would clip in the afternoon while the other one looked after the kids. They each got four hours work in, and so they had a little pocket money.
Bruce Cannady: Well, I thought it was great, but I still think if they’d just stop marking fish, they’d all be better off and save an awful lot of money. But I don’t know where it is going to go anyway. I have no idea.
Pauline Cannady: Well, they won’t have any fish if take out the dams, because it is going to rile up all that under the area, you know, and the fish can’t stand that.Bruce Cannady: All the sludge. They’ve got a lot of those going here in downtown Portland.
Jerry Grover: Dredging the Willamette River, you’re talking about?
Pauline Cannady: Yeah.
Jerry Grover: Stirring up the sediment.
Pauline Cannady: But a time when Bruce was still at the hatchery in the state of Washington, they cleaned up the . It was all pure and clean, and I don’t know what, the first thing I know they just forget it. After they do something, they don’t think they have to maintain it. The same way with buildings. They feel like if they build it, why then they don’t have to do a thing to take care of it. From the date, if you buy a house...
Bruce Cannady: Maintenance programs have always been on the low lowest priority
Jerry Grover: And that was part of the areas you looked at too, the cyclical maintenance program, trying to get money just to...
Bruce Cannady: Just trying to get enough money to keep things going, and I remember that one year that I was in Washington, DC and I was talking to Abe Tunnison, [Chief, NFH System] and Abe knew the figures because he’d been with them for several years. He told me one day, he said, “You know, we’d like to have one and a half million dollars just in maintenance, and you know what we’re going to get?” I said, “What?” He said, “If we could just get a million and a half every year” When I went to the Corps when they brought in Dworshak the first year, I helped put the budget together with the Corps. I said, “I want a million dollars.” “A million dollars? It is brand new.” I said, “In the first place, we’re going to spend a million just correcting all the things that are not done right during construction, and then after that we need it just to keep things going well as we go along, because there will be a lot of things that we’ll find out that should have been done right during construction and wasn’t done,” And I said, “When we finally get through with this we will find out that we should have that ten percent from day one, not wait until about the 15th year and then try to catch up, because you never catch up.”
Jerry Grover: Good philosophy. How come that never sold, except with Dworshak?
Bruce Cannady: Because it’s maintenance. You will never solve a maintenance program anywhere because you don’t cut, clip clippings, I mean, cut ribbons like they do on a new one, whatever you...
Jerry Grover: Yes, okay. So even with Abe, you think Abe was an able leader as far as being able to get money into the budget? Was there a leadership problem in Washington, or is it just the acceptance of Congress?
Bruce Cannady: I don’t know about Abe or Carson. I didn’t know him, I didn’t know he as well as I did Tom Barnaby, and I always remember what Tom said once about people. He said, “You know, I was in research for 20, 25 years before I wound up as an administrator,” and he said, “I will tell you right now,” and by the way I did this for my 50th, I said, “Anyone that starts out to get a degree in anything should have to take administration, public administration, whatever. Just, if nothing else, a couple of classes as you go to know what budgets are and this sort of thing, because if you go in as an...
Pauline Cannady: Engineer.Bruce Cannady: Well, engineer or chemist or whatever, you are not even going to think about budgets or money or anything like that.” How many classes did you have in administration? Did you...
Jerry Grover: Bruce, I’d like to ask you about high points and low points on your caree with the Service..
Bruce Cannady: Good high points, and it seemed like every time something like Spring Creek finally fell into our lap and expanded Dworshak, but it seemed like every one of these was some kind of a high spot because I felt like, and the people and myself were really doing something well for everybody in the long, long run.
Jerry Grover: And the resource?
Bruce Cannady: And the resource. I’m still a hatchery man because I think that the people that thought up hatcheries 125 years ago were on the right track then, and they still are on the right track, and if they hadn’t have been on it I don’t know where we would be with Pacific salmon today. I’m still a hatchery man because I think that the people that thought up hatcheries 125 years ago were on the right track then, and they still are on the right track, and if they hadn’t been on it I don’t know where we would be with Salmon today.
Jerry Grover: Are you saying that without hatcheries you don’t think there’d be salmon in the Columbia River, for example?
Bruce Cannady: If they’d have never, if nobody had figured out a way to have hatcheries, what would have happened? Not very, nothing very good would have happened because they would have finished catching every salmon. They of course are doing that with others species too.
One of my big, one of my high spots, believe it or not, was coming to the Regional Office. I never expected to make it; never even thought of it for several years until I went, Pauline and I had gone to, down to New Orleans, all the ways down for a trip. I think it was May or June, and I had just got back. I was feeling pretty good. We’d had such a lot of fun and so forth. I said, “You know, we ought to do this more often,” and so on and so forth, and Al Kimmerick and Bill Hagen and, they me, and one of the fellows, he was a predecessor of Abe Tunnison, I think he was there. I think there was three of us, and they had stopped, and we were going, I think we were going into lunch or something, and I’d gotten in the back seat. One of them was driving, and all at once one of them, we were just, one of them turned around and said, “Would you mind going to Portland to the Regional Office one of these days?” That is a high spot.
Pauline Cannady: About his retirement, they had a retirement and all the, all those folks that he’d ever worked with in the state...
Bruce Cannady: That was the biggest, the biggest, were you here then?
Jerry Grover: No, I think in that year I would have been in DC and going through the Departmental training program, so I was not here.
Bruce Cannady: Well, I don’t think they’ve had another one after that that was as big as that. Art Hughey who also retired and I were in there. Art went first. Art knew, he was an engineer, and well, he knew the people inside the Service and a few others, but not really like I had. I couldn’t believe, the old Columbia Edgewater was absolutely crammed, and they had come from California and Nevada and all over the place. Pauline Cannady: All the states that he had representatives
Bruce Cannady: Every one that I’d ever worked with. Goddam, they showed up, and I tell you, it just made me feel good. Talk about a high spot, now there was a high spot.
Pauline Cannady: They gave him things. Yeah, that was nice, very nice
But for low points, I don’t know. I was disappointed when I didn’t get to be Regional Supervisor and Smith got it. That was kind of a blow because I thought I was told that I was going to get it. Ned Tuttle was retiring. I thought I was, turned out that it was a man in Washington had another idea, so that was that. And Smith and I got along very well through the years. I mean, we’re good friends. We play bridge together. He’s a better bridge player than I am.
Jerry Grover: If you had to categorize all those things that you did in your career, what was the most pressing issue that you had to address? Which is the button that seemed to push the hardest or lit up the biggest?
Bruce Cannady: My job here in the Regional Office.
Jerry Grover: It would be. Out of your career has there been someone, Bruce, that you could point to that had been a particular mentor or somebody that really influenced you, been helpful? Is there a single individual?
Bruce Cannady: Two of them. I think Al Kimmerick and Tom Barnaby. They were both, when I came into the Regional Office, they both had just been Assistant Regional Directors, and he [Tom] had moved into this new job at the same level as the Regional Director on this program they were going to have that had just started not too long after the war, doing something, not just hatcheries, everything, and of course still trying to do. He was in that. Of course, Tom Barnaby was Assistant Regional Director, both of them, for a long time. Now like I said earlier, I never thought of them as . I liked them both, and I liked them so well that when I retired, (well they both retired ahead of me) when I retired, we kept right on visiting back and forth. In fact, up until a couple of years before Kimmerick died, we had a meeting down in southern Portland or else down at Salem once a month, just chewing the fat. People like Harland Johnson [Hatchery Biologist] was there all the time. We just got together. We liked each other, and kind of a friendship thing that was far beyond what ever we did at hatcheries. Both of them, for a long time.
Jerry Grover: It was far beyond co-workers or...
Pauline Cannady: Tell them about Harland Johnson having, once every fall we all got together.
Bruce Cannady: Yeah, you knew about Harland having annual meeting of retirees.
Jerry Grover: Yeah, I wasn’t a retiree when he was doing that, and then when I got retired, why, he had passed.
Bruce Cannady: Went down, God, he didn’t last long.
Pauline Cannady: Oh, we loved that. We all got together.
Bruce Cannady: Oh, yeah. You would have enjoyed that. Marv come to that every year too, after he retired. Marv was in about, I think he was in four or five years after I retired. I don’t really remember, but I remember him telling me once that, that he (and I didn’t know that until he told me a little later), he said, “You know, when I finally retired they were about ready to throw me out of here.” I said, “Youíre kidding!” “Well,” he said, “it wasn’t that. I can last as long as ever, but,” he said, “they had taken away a lot of things we used to do” Are they still doing those things like in hatcheries and so forth? Are they reorganizing?
Jerry Grover: Well, at the time that I think Marv was talking about was when they were reorganizing and going into Area Offices. The Regional Supervisor for Fisheries, a lot of the operations responsibilities going out to three Area Offices - one in Olympia, one in Boise, and one in Sacramento.
Bruce Cannady: That’s what he was talking about! And so they just, kind of eliminated the stuff that was being done in the Regional Office, and then talking with Marv, he was unhappy with that. They demoted him from a 14 to 13. He told me some about it, but I didn’t ask him too much. Well, I asked him what it was all about, but I don’t remember exactly, but that’s been 20 years ago or so.
Jerry Grover: Yeah, that was a trial for 5 years. They were reorganizing, they still are, Bruce. Things haven’t changed.
Bruce Cannady: Somebody told me awhile back about, and they were telling me, and I said, “Gee, that sounds like the one in 1957 when they called them Tom, Dick, and Harry.” Tom Barnaby, Dick Griffith, and Harry ?; he was the head of River Basins or whatever. He was one of them. They were the three original. They said, and I thought it, that was the way it was when I come in, and they said...
Jerry Grover: Reorganization, you’re talking about.
Bruce Cannady: Yes. They had that organization going for about four or five years, and then all at once they scrapped it and did something else, and they were telling me, he was describing what was going on, and I said, “Jesus, that sounds like the one they had in 1957.”
Jerry Grover: Well, how many reorganization changes did you see in the Service? You talk about the Tom, Dick, and Harry, and we were just mentioning area offices.
Bruce Cannady: I come in 1949...and the Bureau of Fisheries, and they didn’t, and the Wildlife people were over in a separate field. 1951, they pulled them back for the first time together.
Jerry Grover: Bureau of Sport Fisheries and Wildlife?
Bruce Cannady: Fish and Wildlife, yeah, Bureau of Sport Fisheries, no. No, this was the one ahead of that. They had that together. Then I went through that before I even left Leadville, and then when I came to, in fact, they finally were just getting their first people together into, I called Albuquerque. I was in Leadville. I was supposed to come out to Portland, and I’d waited for, they’d even stopped sending me checks. I tried this one and that one. They were out of the office. Well, I wound up [talking] to the Regional Director and I explained to him. He said, “I’ll get into it. I’ll let you know about it.” Boy, did he. Two days later I had my papers.
Pauline Cannady: They’d already shipped our furniture. We were without our furniture, sleeping on the floor.
Bruce Cannady: We shipped our furniture from Colorado clear out here to Washington, and I don’t know, I still don’t know where everything was or what they did, but I’ll tell you, he called and he must have moved somebody because I had papers and was on my way in two days. And then the next one [reorganization] they had was just before I came into the office because that was the Tom, Dick, and Harry, and Leo Lace and that group, and then they had another one. Well, that was a, that was in 1957. By 1958 and 9 was when they split the Commercial Fisheries out, away, and left us Bureau of Sport Fisheries and Wildlife in Washington,
Jerry Grover: And then the Bureau of Commercial Fisheries.
Bruce Cannady: That was the one, that was my second one, if you call it one. Yeah, that is my second one. Now, that went on until about the time I retired. They were already talking about another one, and right after that they set up these Regional or District Offices, or whatever they called them. When was this, about 1972 or 3?
Jerry Grover: 1971. Reorganization plan number four that the President signed creating NOAA and National Marine Fisheries Service, and they moved Commercial Fish over into there and called them NMFS
Pauline Cannady: That is when he retired.
Jerry Grover: And they dropped the name Sports Fisheries and Wildlife and just said Fish and Wildlife Service, which is what we’ve been since.
Bruce Cannady: Think they’ll ever bring them together?
Jerry Grover: Well, I understand Bruce, that last week Secretary Babbitt said they need to be together.
Pauline Cannady: There is another highlight. He had another highlight. He went to Red Bluff and he got there on the train, and he was getting off the train, and here was a band and everything, and he thought, “Whoa, a movie star probably is coming off.” He got off, and they were honoring him, the whole city. They gave him a Stetson and they, I don’t know what all they gave him.
Bruce Cannady: That was about two weeks before I retired, and I was...
Jerry Grover: That was because of Tehama-Colusa?
Bruce Cannady: A bunch from Red Bluff that I’ve gotten pretty well acquainted with being in and out of there, and I remember I was, got in late, about 6:00 or so, and what his name took me over to this, oh, there was about eight or ten in the group.
Jerry Grover: Was Dale Schonaman there then?
Bruce Cannady: Yeah, Schonaman. They had sandwiches, and we got to visiting and God, I guess 10:00 or so. So I kind of got acquainted with all these guys, and then all at once when they decided to have this affair they really bowled me over. I didn’t know about that at all. They just, that was right out of, I thought this band and everything, they were going t o have a parade of some kind. It turned out the whole damn thing was for me.
Jerry Grover: Overall, would you gauge that it’s been a good career and the Fish and Wildlife Service is good to work for?
Bruce Cannady: If I had to go over and do it again, I’m sure I would. I might like one or two of the spots we could do without, but what the hell, you have to take the good and the bad and the bad and the good, so...Jerry Grover: But there was more good than bad?
Bruce Cannady: was a good one, and I think that I had a lot to do with things. You’ve been in your career. You’re now retired. Can you look back and feel like you did a lot of good while you were there? You have to.
Jerry Grover: Oh, I do. I didn’t, you know, but some folks left with a red ass. You know, they walked out the door of the Fish and Wildlife Service and never looked back and I don’t feel that way at all. I gave 36 and a half years of my life. I felt good that I did. I liked the Fish and Wildlife Service. I too would do it again.
Bruce Cannady: Well, I used to say, if you don’t enjoy what you’re doing, by God you better get another line of work because it is only one road that you’re going down, and if you’re not going to be happy while you’re going, you better find another road of doing it.
Jerry Grover: Have you found people were jealous of the job that you had, envious?
Bruce Cannady: When I thought of it, I immediately discarded it because I thought that it was a waste of time trying to decide whether you were liked. When I was a boss, as a manager out there, you know when you’re in here it is different, it is a different deal. It’s like if you were in Washington; that is a different deal. Everything is different. When I was out there I always had, I used to say, you know, being a manager is the toughest job of all because you are trying to make people happy, and you can’t make people happy. I always remember Tom, or John Pelner. When I was leaving to come up to Carson he said, “Bruce, remember this: no matter what you do with those fellows, there is going to be days. They’re going to hate your guts,” and he’s right.
Pauline Cannady: He only had one fellow leave, and he didn’t want to fire him, but he was so incompetent.
Bruce Cannady: Ben Crosby.
Pauline Cannady: Yeah, so he brought him in and talked to him and everything like that. Finally, what did you do about him?
Bruce Cannady: I run into him once in Portland, and he was nice. Well, he was a tough guy to...
Pauline Cannady: A college fellow.
Bruce Cannady: He graduated from the University of Wyoming, and he was as out of his depth here as if he was in water 90 feet deep, and he had the nicest wife and they were, in fact when I said I, it was five and a half months, I said, “I’ve got to decide whether you’re going to go or not, and I think you ought to go, really.”
Pauline Cannady: They had six month probation.
Bruce Cannady: “You’ve just made enough mistakes that I think you ought to go, and I don’t like it.” And all he said, “Well, that is all right.” He said, “You know, we’re expecting a baby, and I wonder if I could stick around here for about another month or two” I said, Sure.” The only one that I can swear that I finally, and I always remember the people in the office. I told them that a couple of times that I had this problem and I might have to let him go and, “Oh yeah, we’ll back you up, fine and dandy. We’ll back you up.” Then when I had to drop it on the desk in paper, this guy is going oh, good God. They just turned around about this 180 degrees. I’m sure you had, you were in that same spot a few times.
Bruce Cannady: I have known people like Pelner and so on. Benny Cox –did you know Benny?
Jerry Grover: I knew Benny. Knew John when I was at Coleman. John would come by and coach the running of the hatchery down there.
Bruce Cannady: Yeah, and you knew, of course you knew Harland.
Jerry Grover: I knew Harland and Steve Leak, who was his assistant.
Bruce Cannady: He surprised me. He left a little sooner than I thought he would, so I, that was before you came in. I’m trying to think, you were, who did you follow?
Jerry Grover: Well, I came to the Region three different times, Bruce.
Bruce Cannady: You would think when you talk about a hatchery, we always want to go get one of these guys that’s out of the eighth grade somewhere. But I was wanting to get college graduates. I was meeting with Bill Hagen, Chief of Fish Hatcheries and he was describing the great benefit of college graduates with fishery science degrees. And when he got through expounding this he said, “What do you think? “ And I could talk faster I guess, always than Tuttle, but I said, “When and how much, you kidding. We will take six.” He said, “No, I’m not kidding.” I said, “I tell you, we’ve got to get these kind of people in.” Yes sir, and he said, “Fine and dandy.”
Now, about this time, Jimmy Warren came wandering into the office. He come wandering in the office in an Army uniform looking for a job. That’s how he came to be aboard with us because boy, I’d began to snap these people right up, right now. I didn’t know who he was or what he was like, but I always remember that I asked for six people, and I got them. You can name them probably today, Bill Walsdorf was one of them. Okay. I know Ken Higgs would have to be in that crowd or close to it. Russ Ferg, Paul Hemrick, Einer Wold, Jack Kinchloe. I’m trying to think, I don’t know my names anymore.
Jerry Grover: You said Jim Warren.
Bruce Cannady: He wasn’t one of that six. He was extra, and there was another one. But that is when we got them in. The minute they graduated we sent them through this two years plan. You worked at the hatchery one year, then you’d go to Courtland In-service fish nutrition training school and then you’d go to Leetown fish health course, or vice versa, and all of that come right of that little conversation that we had with Bill Hagen. It was Bill Hagen that did it, and he did it there in about five minutes.
Jerry Grover: That seemed like that was a major change or a major move for the Fish and Wildlife Service and Fish Hatcheries. It changed forever the look of the Fish and Wildlife Service
Pauline Cannady: You went to the college and talked to fellows.
Bruce Cannady: What was the big guy that was at Carson?
Jerry Grover: Don Zirjacks.Bruce Cannady: No, he was bigger. He went to, he went to school, but he went to Boston. He was in Boston, and then he came back out here. He was, he was a trainee, but it was some kind.
Jerry Grover: Don Zirjacks. He never got a degree. He was in the GS-488 series, but
they converted them all. He was grandfathered in, and he still was a hatchery manager, and he managed Carson...
Bruce Cannady: At one time I knew these guys and I knew the program, and I’d been there, I was in there from day one.
I had some criticism from different ones. I always remember Tuttle said once, he said, “You know, at one time we always thought if a guy worked hard he would go right on up until he became a manager.” I said, “Well, that has nit changed, we still have a bunch of people doing the same things.”
Jerry Grover: Well, it kind of kick started these college graduates because instead of starting as a Fish Culturist 1 or a GS-1, you started them out as a GS-5. They got up a few ladder rungs. Did you see any conflict with the people on board when you started bringing these college people in, because you were showing them some favoritism by bringing them in at a higher grade and then sending them to Courtland or Leetown after one year?
Bruce Cannady: I talked to some of them at the time and I said, You know, at least for a few years and probably as long as you’re working you will have the same chance as any one else, it’s just going to be a little bit tougher, and it was, of course. We got some very good people.
God, I thought once, I spent an evening with Ken Higgs, and we got into two or three arguments about this and that, and I was absolutely amazed. He was so goddamn smart. I mean, he knew what he was talking about, and that was the kind of people I wanted in the hatchery program.
Jerry Grover: Good. They all turned out to be successful, turned out to be managers or hatchery biologists or station biologists like Walsdorf.
Bruce Cannady: I never really knew them before. I had them on paper, and we picked them. I always remember that when they went to work, all six of them, I told Ned one day, I said, “You know, we’re going to be lucky if we keep two of these people.” And several years later I said, “I’ll be damned, we kept all six of them.” Wasn’t that something? But that was a good, that was a good program.
I don’t know how it went in the other part of the system, whether Bill did the same, but Bill, God, he told me later, he said, “Boy you just went for this hand over fist, just wanted it badly.” He said, “Here I thought maybe people would be against this, and you weren’t” Well, I said, no, anybody in their right mind would go for this kind of a program. It is going to cost some money, and I said, “Bill,” I said, “I don’t worry about it.” And we didn’t.
Jerry Grover: This was the professionalization of the Fish Hatchery program, bringing in the college graduates.
Jerry Grover: You didn’t lie to these guys, did you?
Bruce Cannady: No.
Jerry Grover: To get them on board? See, I was told, I was working as a Fisheries Management Biologist in California doing professional and scientific fisheries management things. Fish hatcheries people were thought of as a kind of like, a low life. They were the ones that would shoot a doe deer out of season, you know, and probably would keep an undersized fish if they caught it and hide it. I was hired back in Region 5. I was told you were going to be a Fisheries Management Biologist in this poor, backward state of West by God Virginia, you know, the land of John L. Lewis and the coal miners and the unions and screwed up habitat, and they needed professional biologists back there, but you’ll be stationed at a hatchery in White Sulphur Springs. I go back there, and guess what my first job was? I was sweeping fish shit out of the ponds.
Bruce Cannady: That wasn’t always fun.
Jerry Grover: Then I got into high tech grass cutting.
Pauline Cannady: When Bruce was at Cortland, New York, they tried to talk him into staying there and taking over the hatchery portion of the training school
Bruce Cannady: Art Phillips wanted me to stay there.
Pauline Cannady: And boy, I tell you, that weather.
Bruce Cannady: John Maxwell was already going to go, they already had made up their mind that John was going to go to the office in Boston, and he wanted me to stay. Well, it was the same job that a couple years later that Ray Vaughan had.
Jerry Grover: Okay, I didn’t remember Ray being at Cortland. I remember him being at Lamar.
Bruce Cannady: Yeah, he was at Cortland before he went to Lamar. Anyway, I said, “I don’t want to do that. I’m a westerner and I’ve been here a year, and I’ve enjoyed every minute of it, but I’d like to go home.” I told them I just feel like a long way from home. So he let me go home, but I, you know, Art, I don’t know how many times I think he had dinner with us in Portland here, a couple of three times. Well, what else?
Jerry Grover: Stories. You talk about Cookie, the manager at the Creston, MT, hatchery. There is always so many stories told about Cookie. Are any of those true, you suppose? About the one, I can remember one about a...
Bruce Cannady: Did you ever read, did you ever happen to read one of his letters? He would write. Don’t know whether I ever, I’m sure I told you. He’d write epistles.
Jerry Grover: Yes, one that... They should have framed those things.
Bruce Cannady: He’d start in and he’d write, and about the time that he’d sign the goddamn thing he’d have an afterthought, so he would write up on the side of the page, and then he would have another one and he’d write it on the other side, write it along the bottom. He would turn it over and God, he’d have these addendums would just go on and on and on, and most of, I don’t know why he even bothered about writing, and I don’t know that he ever, you know, in the office. He’d have the people all doing this and that, and he would be out feeding the fish. He loved to feed the fish. He was a manager, so he got to feed the fish.
Jerry Grover: The fun part. On the letters again, I understand everything. I’ve heard that same story about Cookie writing the letters in big long epistles. He’d write on the back side, he’d add a second page and then he would say, “Oh heck, forget the whole thing, I’ve changed my mind.” Then he would sign it and send it in.Did you ever...
Bruce Cannady: I tell you, he was a classic.
Jerry Grover: He was also the guy, I heard the story about him looking over the surplus property list, always trying to find some he needed at the hatchery for free. There was this drilling machine in Seattle and he said, “God that would be just what they needed in the shop,” and so he puts in a request and gets it shipped there, and the guy from, from the train station called and said he had a delivery for the hatchery, and he said, “I’ll be right down and pick it up.” The train station guy said, “What do you mean, it is on two flat cars.” Well, this drilling machine was something for 16 inch guns that came out of the Naval base in Seattle, and then Cookie had to pay to send that darn thing back, which was a bunch of money.
Bruce Cannady: I remember the story, but I had forgotten all about it, but that is him exactly, he was going to get this little thing and wound up he had two flat cars. Hell’s fire, he had to get a drag line crane to move anything like that, but that was Cookie. He, oh boy, and I tell you, I’ll tell one story about him. I generally would like to stay in a hotel, but this time, particular time when I said I’m coming, why old Cookie says, “Well, be sure and stay with us,” and I started to hesitate and he said, “No, I’m not taking no for an answer. You’ve got to stay with us.” So I told him all right. So I spent the night with him. His wife, I’m trying to think what her name is, I can’t think, but anyway, then I said something later about it and they said, “Oh Jesus, she is the best cook in the world.” I got it. Oh boy, was she a cook.
Jerry Grover: Well there were some characters in the Fish and Wildlife Service up and down the river, and there is some hard drinking, hard poker playing.
Bruce Cannady: You knew, I think you did, Bob McElrath. His wife, his wife... Well, she lives over here at the coast at Manzanita.
Jerry Grover: What about other old characters on the river here in the system? John Pelner was one. He is kind of, I don’t know whether there is any stories...
Bruce Cannady: John and I had a falling out and I’ve always regretted it, and its one of those things that I just had a brainstorm that I should’nt have, something else. John and I had been very good friends ever since I knew him, almost except for the very last before he retired. When I left Battle Creek and went up to Coleman, John and I, John didn’t want me to come up there at all. He later changed his mind and in fact, I found out later that of all the people that did him. When I left Battle Creek and went up to Coleman, John did not recommend anybody to be promoted. I was one of the very few that John did. He thought that was all right. When I first got up there, I’d only worked there about two weeks. It was spring and we began to change things around, and I had to get a crew out here to work, clean and whatever they were doing, and I sent them out. We’d had some bad weather, and we hadn’t done anything for a couple, three days. Well all at once this morning we have nice weather, so I sent a crew out there, and then I walked up to the hatchery and ran into John, and John began to give me hell because these people were not working and they were supposed to be out working, and by God, what are you doing, blah, blah, blah. John really, he could do this and I waited until he ran down, and then I really told him off. He had made me mad, so I made him mad right back because I pointed out, “There are four men out there working right now and doing what I’ve already told them. Now what are you talking about?” Blah, blah, and he turned around and he apologized, and we, I had already been told for years that John, if he’d ever get on top of you he’d just beat you right into the ground. I had made up my mind that was never going to happen to me even if I had to leave town. So I waited for him when I got this time, and then I took care of him. Well anyway, it went on until after he retired, and I get this notice that instead of, he had a home down in Red Bluff, but he was staying there, and that was against that particular required occupancy rule for hatchery housing at the time. Now as it happened, not long after that, the thing came up with Benny Cox at Spring Creek and I did what I should have done the first time with John, and I didn’t. I told Benny, I called him and told him, I said, “You are not supposed to do this.” “Well,” he said, “I’m kind of in a bind”, and I said, “Just leave it alone.” So I went to the Chief of Administration and... So I got an okay and we handled it all verbally, and he was gone in a couple of weeks and everything was taken care of. But in John’s case, instead of me doing what I should have done the second time, I told him what I’m what am I going to do, words like this. So for some reason, Tuttle was gone, and I wrote a letter and went to have the Regional Director sign it. John Finley got it. He sent it back. He said, “Oh!” I said, ”It’s the rule. What are we going to do about it?” He said, “Well I don’t know, it’s kind of your problem. If you want to write a letter, go ahead.” That was a mistake. That was my, his first mistake, and mine was listening to him because I went ahead and I wrote the letter and I signed it as Acting Regional Supervisor, and John never forgave me.
Jerry Grover: Basically you told him to move back on the hatchery or move out, retire.
Bruce Cannady: Something like that. And instead, he compounded it. What he should have done was given me a ring and said, “Jesus, I’m in a trouble,” and we would have worked it out, and I would have taken the second route and got him out of it. Instead, the last time I saw John he was still mad. I ran into him in Red Bluff at something or other and he made some remark, and I said, “John, I’m sorry,” because at the time it was just one of those things probably shouldn’t have happened, but it did, but he never forgave me.
Jerry Grover: John, what I remember of John Pelner, at least in his later years, that he always smoked these roll-your-own cigarettes, and he always set back, and there was always little sparks. He didn’t have a shirt that didn’t look like it had been shot with a shot gun. I mean, just full of little burnt holes.
Bruce Cannady: Yeah, oh yes. John was, I tell you, I loved John. I liked him, and we got along fine, and I always regretted that last damn incident that, I didn’t have any idea that he would react like he would, that he would do something or other, maybe call or whatever, and I look back, I think, Jesus, I should have called him first, you know and said, “Look, you’re in trouble on and you’re causing me a lot of trouble. We’ve got to work something out here.” I just did it wrong.
Jerry Grover: I’m going end the interview here. I appreciate you taking the time to talk with me and share your life. Many thanks!